With humor, rage, and confessional detail, Virginie Despentes—in her own words “more King Kong than Kate Moss”—delivers a highly charged account of women’s lives today. She explodes common attitudes about sex and gender, and shows how modern beauty myths are ripe for rebelling against. Using her own experiences of rape, prostitution, and working in the porn industry as a jumping-off point, she makes the bold, stinging point that when it comes to sex today, everyone's getting screwed.

"Finally someone has done it! The feminist movement needs King Kong Theory now more than ever. A must read for every sex worker, tranny, punk, queer, john, academic, pornographer—and for all those people who dislike them too." —Annie Sprinkle, sex educator

"The part that isn't sassily justifying her art, vision, and situated mode of thinking is half theoretical expansion and half memoir—fusing it all into one book that's accessible, entertaining and chock full of analysis of the type of -isms that can make the heart of this feminist melt. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of pop culture moments for those of us who need that fix, but right alongside them is the nitty-gritty analysis that most commercially successful pop-feminism books tend to leave out. . . a risky, though engrossing, read." —Bitch Media

"Enjoyed it thoroughly. It is an urgent and overdue assessment of gender and culture. . . . An excellent book." —3:AM Magazine

"Part memoir, part political pamphlet, [King King Theory] is a furious condemnation of the 'servility' of enforced femininity." —The Observer

"[Virginie Despentes] sets her sights on saving us all from the demeaning, idiotic 'icons' we're sold on a daily basis, and she does it here in a thought-provoking and cleverly written way." —The List